Surrender, Dorothy!

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been thinking.

It’s been a hard year. Actually, it’s been pretty hard ever since Tuesday, November 6, 2012, when I realized the American people had re-elected Barack Obama and that now he was free to really implement that “change” we’d all been so fervently “hoping” for.

The political change I’ve undergone and then described on this blog wasn’t just a change from liberal to right. It was a change in the depth of my interest in the entire topic of politics, and that of history as well. Earlier in my life I’d read the newspaper regularly and kept myself fairly well informed, on the surface. But I had no particular interest in politics, and although I realized that politics affected me somewhat, I didn’t think it was of the utmost importance.

And in fact, back then the two parties weren’t as far apart as I now see them being. It didn’t seem so important to pay close attention. And politics was icky, nasty, stupid; both parties seemed petty, and I didn’t see many public figures to emulate or deeply admire.

Little did I know that was a relative golden age.

One funny thing—not funny ha-ha; funny strange—is that, as time has gone on and conservatives have griped about how there’s no difference between the two parties, I saw a greater and greater difference. There’s a huge difference in what they stand for, and even in tactics. Yes, yes of course the GOP often doesn’t stick to what it says it will do, and even if it sticks to it the tactic isn’t always successful. And yes, it seems that the Democrats are more unified and more ruthless in getting what they want, but you know one of the main reasons it’s that way? Because their task is much easier: they’re going in the direction of more power for themselves, not less, which is something politicians tend to like. And they’re going in the direction of making promises to give people stuff, and that’s something humans tend to like.

Now that we’ve got that cleared up—the conservative task is far harder—let me just say that there’s one way in which the two parties have gotten more similar, and that’s in how their constituents think about politics. Impatience and extremes. For example, lately I’ve seen a lot of this sort of argument from people on the right: the republic is dead, and cannot be revived, so it’s best to choose a tyrant from our side who’ll ride roughshod over many of the principles in which we believe—oh, like the rule of law—so that we can get things done. The ends justify the means.

I get that point of view, but I don’t share it, and I think it’s a dangerous, fatalist surrender to what you profess to hate.

Election 2016: the front-runners voters don’t like

The New Neo Posted on by

I cannot recall a campaign season even remotely like this one, where the majority of voters dislike both front-runners, as confirmed by a recent CBS News/New York Times poll:

Compared to frontrunners in previous presidential primary races, Trump and Clinton’s unfavorable ratings (57 percent and 52 percent respectively) are the highest in CBS News/New York Times Polls going back to 1984, when CBS began asking this question.

chartfavorable

Perhaps, not surprisingly, most Democrats have negative views of Trump and a majority of Republicans view Clinton unfavorably. But more than half of independents have unfavorable views of both candidates. Clinton is viewed more positively by members of her own party than Trump is by his. Six in 10 Democrats have a favorable opinion of Clinton; just about half of Republicans have a favorable opinion of Trump.

So the difference between Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable rating and that of Donald Trump is that she has a higher favorable rating among her own party members than Trump does among his. But there isn’t a single previous candidate since 1984 that is even close in unfavorable ratings to either of this year’s front-runners. The previous high was a paltry 41% unfavorable, shared by several candidates.

Hillary Clinton tends to beat Trump in nationwide polls. Of course, in the past, polls that were taken at this point in time in a campaign have not been predictive of very much. However, unlike in many years, the public is very familiar with both of these front-runners, which might mean that attitudes towards them are more entrenched. And it may be that the main reason that Hillary does better in head-to-head polls against Trump is because she draws more Democratic support than he draws Republican support.

DaTechGuy has a question

The New Neo Posted on by

Why has one story gotten a lot of coverage and the other story very little?

I guess not all National Enquirer gossip is created equal.

I suggest it all be ignored until proven true. But I doubt most people will follow that suggestion.

It all reminds me of this LBJ story (apocryphal or not) that I’ve cited before:

…[L]egend has it that during one of Lyndon Johnson’s congressional campaigns he decided to spread a rumor that his opponent was a pig-fucker. LBJ’s campaign manager said, “Lyndon, you know he doesn’t do that!” Johnson replied, “I know. I just want to make him deny it.”

How incompetent were the Brussels authorities?

The New Neo Posted on by

There are some rather large security holes through which the Belgium terrorists slipped. For example, as in many other recent European attacks, the perpetrators were “known wolves”:

All three of the suspects, each Belgian citizens, had been alerted to Belgian officials prior to the attacks and were on a U.S. counterterrorism watch list. Police agency Interpol issued a “red notice” for Najim Laachraoui, saying he was wanted for involvement in association with terrorism and the unauthorized engineering of explosives.

Ibrahim El Bakraoui had been detained in Turkey as a foreign terrorist fighter last June and deported back to Europe.Turkey says the Belgian authorities failed to confirm the suspect’s jihadist links and released him.

In addition, there seems to be an unusual degree of denial, fragmentation, and confusion in Belgium:

On February 29, EU security agencies called for an immediate overhaul of the security measures at Belgian airports and borders, which were “wide open” to access by terrorists and lacked the tools for inspecting passengers on arrival and departure. These inclue Brussels’ second airport in Charleroi, the terminus for charter flights to and from Algeria, Tunisia and Turkey.

Although the Belgian authorities were warned that Charleroi presented Isil terrorists with an open door from those countries into Europe, passengers passing through were still not subjected to searches…

Critics have argued that the nation’s fragmented law enforcement and political systems ”” divided in part because of power splits between the two main language groups, French and Flemish ”” have helped extremists and criminal gangs operate with near impunity. Greater Brussels, for instance, is divided into 19 communes and six separate police zones. Belgium’s 10 provinces are split into almost 600 municipal councils.

Is Trump America’s Berlusconi?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve seen that analogy before. Here’s an analysis that describes why it might be so, and what the consequences would be.

Excerpt:

Berlusconi wrecked the idea of the political party as the expression of a collective will. Forza Italia, which translates roughly to “Let’s go, Italy!,” was just another channel for Berlusconi to push his own personal brand. Ninety percent of its deputies in 1994 had never held parliamentary office. That inexperience translated into a lack of political energy and policy creativity. Twenty years of Italy as a joke on the international stage starts there. Twenty years of legislation tailor-crafted to Berlusconi’s business and legal interests; of spats with the Italian judiciary; of hedonistic sideshows leaving the highest office in the land impotent while the economy sputtered. And it all started with the notion, now echoed in America by Trump, that experience in office is unimportant, even detrimental, and that the party exists merely to serve the leader. Meanwhile, Italy’s corruption continued unabated, and the economy languished. Berlusconismo left untouched the negative elements of Italian political life that had ushered him into office in the first place.

You might want to read the whole thing.

Well, at least you can say that Obama’s consistent

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama reacts as usual—courting our enemies while downplaying his reaction to terrorism:

Obama remains inert, unmoved, displaying a neglect and insouciance that borders on denial. His nonreaction to the Belgian massacre ”” his 34-minute speech in Havana devoted 51 seconds to Brussels ”” left the world as stunned as it was after the Paris massacre, when Obama did nothing. Worse, at his now notorious November news conference in Turkey, his only show of passion regarding Paris was to berate Islamophobes.

Trump’s women problem—and Cruz’s?

The New Neo Posted on by

As time has gone on, Trump has become more and more unpopular with women voters, and that includes Republican women:

This month, about half (47 percent) of Republican female primary voters said they could not imagine themselves voting for Trump. (About 40 percent of male GOP primary voters said the same.)…

Trump’s favorability with women overall is a dismal 21 percent positive/ 70 (!) percent negative.

With men, it’s 28 percent positive/ 59 percent negative.

And while women traditionally vote for Democratic candidates in larger numbers than men, data shows that a Trump nomination would exacerbate the issue for Republicans.

Asked if they would prefer to see a Democratic president or a Republican president regardless of who the nominees are, 52 percent of female voters chose the Democratic option while 36 percent chose the Republican option. That’s a net advantage of 16 percentage points for the Democratic candidate.

But plug in the names “Hillary Clinton” and “Donald Trump” and the gap gets even wider.

In that hypothetical matchup, just 31 percent of women said they would chose Trump, while 58 percent said they would chose Clinton. That’s a net advantage of 27 points for Clinton.

I think this is unprecedented, although I have no proof. It’s certainly ominous for a Trump candidacy, and I don’t see it changing, except for the worse.

I’ve seen it said by a lot of blog commenters and bloggers that Trump is an alpha male, and as such he appeals to women. I’ve long been puzzled by this “alpha male” designation, because it seems to me that Trump has little in common with actual alpha males. They don’t boast and tell you how great they are and how much everyone likes them and how much money they make, or lie to make themselves sound bigger and better. Those are fake alpha males. No one who really is like that needs to brag about it.

Alpha male examples: the characters John Wayne played. Reagan. Washington. Eisenhower. Many in the military. That guy who was instrumental in stopping the French train terrorist attack recently, for example.

Fake alpha males: Charlie Sheen. Donald Trump. Most of the guys on those “I’ve got game” blogs (I forget the names of the blogs, but I’ve read a number of them on occasion).

I had written all of the above before I saw this article at American Thinker, which says essentially the same thing—including another thought I had recently (after Trump’s targeting of Heidi Cruz’s looks), which was that “Trump fights like a girl.”

Here’s the American Thinker article:

To elaborate, this tweet, and its implied message, smacks of thirteen-year-old girl cattiness. “Never talk to my boyfriend again, Suzy! He would hate you anyway, because you’re so ugly!”

Why then, to be perfectly clear, have I flipped my previous assessment of Trump’s character from thirteen-year-old boy to thirteen-year-old girl? Because thirteen-year-old boys don’t attack other boys by telling them their girlfriends are ugly. Even by that pubescent stage of development, a normal boy has learned, by hormonal intuition if not by the influence of a decent father figure, that getting at a rival by insulting his girl is just about the most unmanly thing a male of the species can do…

And how will Trump’s most boisterous supporters defend their hero’s girlish attack on Cruz’ wife? They will say, as they already are saying, “But he started it!”

That’s what I meant by calling Trump “juvenile.” And it boggles my mind that so many people seem to think this indicates strength on Trump’s part.

Now the Trump activists are touting this National Enquirer article about Ted Cruz’s supposed affairs. It won’t matter a bit to them if a shred of proof is never found ; the rumor is good enough. And it doesn’t matter a bit to them that Trump has had multiple affairs and bragged about them.

Now, I have no idea whether the Enquirer story is true or not. I tend to think not, simply because I think Cruz is too smart to run for president with that many skeletons rattling around in his closet. But as I said, I don’t know, but the point of running such a story—true or not—is to get the rumors flowing.

And it comes as no surprise whatsoever—none—to learn that the CEO of the Enquirer and Trump are great good friends and have been for quite some time (and note that the following was written back in October):

Trump and Enquirer CEO David Pecker have been friends for years. “They’re very close,” said a source close to the Enquirer…

…[Trump’s] friendship with Pecker has paid dividends. At key moments during the GOP primary the Enquirer has helped boost Trump’s campaign by attacking his rivals and fawning over him. Two weeks after Trump launched his campaign in mid-June, the Enquirer reported that Jeb Bush was “involved in the drug trade in Florida” in the ’80s and that, as governor, he was plagued by “sleazy cheating scandals ”¦ [with a] Playboy Bunny turned lawyer.” In September, the Enquirer published an unflattering photograph of Bush’s adult daughter apparently taking cigarette breaks at her office. The article hit just days after Jeb told Americans they needed to work longer hours.

Carly Fiorina has also been slimed. After the former Hewlett-Packard CEO bested Trump at the second GOP debate last month, the Enquirer ran an article headlined “Homewrecker Carly Fiorina Lied About Druggie Daughter.” The article attacked one of Fiorina’s best moments at the debate: her emotional account of her daughter’s struggle with drug addiction. “The National Enquirer has exclusively learned that Lori Ann Fiorina, who died in October 2009, was in fact Carly’s stepdaughter,” the tabloid reported. “She was brought up not by Carly but by her biological mom, Patricia Fiorina, whose marriage allegedly was wrecked by the 61-year-old White House hopeful who is determined to knock Donald Trump from his superior front-runner status!”…

Meanwhile, Trump has been exclusively celebrated in the Enquirer’s pages. As talk of a Trump candidacy heated up last winter, the tabloid published an article headlined “Trump’s the One!” that reported him leading in the polls. In September, the Enquirer published a three-part series by Trump himself under the headline “The Man Behind the Legend!”

About a month ago the Enquirer endorsed Trump enthusiastically and unequivocally, and rumor has it (see? I can play that game too) that Trump’s own dirt is strictly off-limits for the tabloid.

I’d like to add that this is the sort of thing I detest writing about. But this is the sort of thing we’ll be seeing more and more of this campaign season, I would wager.

Hand writing

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a lightly-edited repeat of a post of mine that was first published in 2008.]

This Atlantic article by Nicholas Carr is a recommended read, about the reported loss of concentration and patience for absorbing longer works that he believes comes from too much internet Googling.

I was especially intrigued by an anecdote from the article about how the medium by which a person writes, rather than reads, can change an author’s style. Continue reading →

The history of Molenbeek’s decline

The New Neo Posted on by

This is of interest:

The troubles for Molenbeek began under the administration of district’s socialist mayor Philippe Moureaux, who ruled from 1992 till 2012. Under his reign the law and order collapsed, and businesses fled the district unable to cope with rising crime. The district with migrant Muslim population of about 40 percent, has since turned into a No-Go Zone for law enforcement…

The decline of Molenbeek is the story of a declining European civilisation. Proudly bearing the nickname of “Little Manchester,” the district was once at the heart of Europe’s mercantile success story at the advent of capitalism. Decades of Socialist misrule and unrestricted migration have turned the suburb into “Little Beirut” ”” a safe haven for Islamic terrorism.

Socialism creates the decline, and other groups come in, like parasites on a weakened host.

Speaking of weakened hosts, there is a tide of opinion in Europe not just against the death penalty (abolished everywhere but Belarus), but even against life sentences.

[NOTE: SEE this for a previous post of mine about Molenbeek.]

Trump’s Melania-Heidi wars

The New Neo Posted on by

You know, I keep taking vows not to respond to every petty thing Trump does. And for the most part, I think I’ve done okay (not perfect, but okay) at keeping to that vow, and trying to deal with only the bigger and more important things.

But today I’m torn. Because the smaller seemingly petty things are so telling about the man, and often so troubling.

So I’ll take up the gauntlet of Trump’s attack on Heidi Cruz, but I’ll do it by referring to two other blog posts that go into the back-and-forth in some detail: this and this. Read them, or at least one of them, in order to get the flavor of what we’re talking about here.

It tells us a number of things about what used to quaintly be called character. To me, it says that Trump’s either careless about the truth or willfully distorting the truth about the origins of the ad with Melania’s photo. It also says that low blows and threats are his stock in trade (but we already knew that). Giving this guy more power—much less the most powerful office in the land—would only encourage this monster within him to grow and thrive. And no, it’s not an act on his part, nor is it just politics—much less politics as usual. This dirty pool had been Trump’s m.o. for his entire adult life, probably even earlier.

Trump is juvenile. I don’t want someone juvenile in the Oval Office. Obama was juvenile enough for me, and Trump makes Obama look like an old graybeard. Why couldn’t Trump have answered the ad showing the semi-nude GQ photo of Melania (and which was captioned “Meet Melania Trump: your next First Lady”) by saying something like: “Aren’t I a lucky guy? That’s MY “first lady,” every single day!” Every man—and some women—in America would probably have chuckled and thought it a great thing. But he didn’t go there; he went in a completely different and much lower direction, because that’s his nature.

In the latter of those two posts I linked to, Ace writes:

Trump has exactly two business successes: Being successfully born to his mother, and successfully outliving his father.

I’ll be charitable and add three more: for the most part Trump has been good at large-scale real estate development, he is excellent at self-promotion, and he is good at channeling and expressing the frustrations of many voters these days. Those are very real accomplishments, but they are not transferable to being a good president, although so far they definitely have been transferable to success in the GOP primaries this year.

[NOTE: Some people would add a fourth accomplishment of Trump’s (one I consider irrelevant to the presidency): he’s a good father. That is based on how his kids seem to have turned out. I would agree that the evidence is that he’s certainly not a bad father—and that he loves his kids and they love him. But the evidence also is that he didn’t have all that much to do with raising the children during their earlier years—nor did their mother, for that matter. That task was left to a combination of nannies and their grandparents.]

The blogosphere and Trump commenters

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “brdavis9,” who’s been around on this blog off and on for a long time, has this to say after remarking on how many blogs’ comments sections have gone to Facebook comments or had other problems with commenters lately:

Congrat’s neo: you’re now Eldest, and ”“ so far, at least ”“ the last remaining bastion of rational discourse and generally “polite disagreements” comportment. Kudos. Pray continue. Live long. Prosper.

””””””
”¦this season is simply not like others.

50 years I’ve been politically aware, and active for 45 years ”¦and actively commenting since way before the world wide web (anyone else still recall the Prodigy community in the dial-up days ”¦and there were trolls and flame-wars then, too: it’s not exactly a recent phenomena) and this is ”¦simply madness.

Thank you, brdavis9, for the kind words. I’m not 100% sure I feel secure in being the Eldest or the Last One Standing, with my finger in the dike against the threatening flood, but I’ll try my best to keep it firmly planted there.

I have to put out a word for my fellow bloggers, though. This season really is the worst I’ve seen in the eleven years I’ve been a blogger. It seems to be worst in both volume of the troll/flamer influx, dogged persistence of same, and extremity of the attacks (ad hominems, obscenities, goalpost moving, insults of all kinds, gleeful gloating, etc.). I don’t know why this is, but I suspect that some of the trolls are paid political operatives—although that has always been the case (and some, as has also always been the case, have IP numbers from abroad, by the way).

It’s enough to drive a blogger nuts, and some of us weren’t so stable to begin with. What you see is the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is necessary to keep comments functioning and relatively civil.

Now, I realize we’re not running a tea party (small “t” small “p”) here, and of course there’s going to be disagreement, some of it quite bitter. But I try to enforce both the general rules of commenting on the blog and also the more specific ones on inter-commenter insults as best I can. Most of this is done behind-the-scenes, and there’s been a lot of it this campaign season.

The other thing that’s hard, and might account for some blogger burnout, is the disappointment this campaign season has brought for conservative bloggers. Most of them do not support Donald Trump, and “do not support” is putting it mildly. But just a short while ago it looked like it was going to be a wonderful campaign year with lots of excellent candidates and a very good chance of beating Hillary Clinton, the conservatives’ arch-nemesis. Most of us see Trump’s candidacy not only as the death knell of conservatism but as the surest possible way to elect Hillary Clinton. It’s understandable that a person who sees it that way would be less than patient with Trump trolls—as opposed to bona fide Trump-supporting commenters interested in polite and rational argument, who are welcome here and elsewhere.

Let’s say the Belgian government knew an attack would be coming at the airport: what should they have done?

The New Neo Posted on by

Commenter “Artfldgr” has offered this link from Haaretz:

The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.

Despite the advance warning, the intelligence and security preparedness in Brussels, where most of the European Union agencies are located, was limited in its scope and insufficient for the severity and immediacy of the alert.

As far as is known, the attacks were planned by the headquarters of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Raqqa, Syria, which it has pronounced as the capital of its Islamic caliphate.

The terror cell responsible for the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday was closely associated with the network behind the series of attacks in Paris last November. At this stage, it appears that both were part of the same terrorist infrastructure, connected at the top by the terrorist Salah Abdeslam, who was involved in both the preparation for the Paris attacks and its implementation…

Abdeslam’s arrest was apparently the trigger for Tuesday’s attacks, due to the concern in ISIS that he might give information about the planned attacks under interrogation, particularly in the light of reports that he was cooperating with his captors…

The testimony of the detained terrorist, alongside other intelligence information, part of which concerned ISIS operations in Syria, should have resulted in much more stringent security preparedness in crowded public places in Brussels, along with a heightened search for the cell.

We don’t know whether this report is accurate or not, but let’s say for the sake of argument that it is.

The question is: what should the authorities have done that they didn’t do? Which is a subset of the question: how do we prevent attacks on soft targets at their most vulnerable points (the Brussels airport attack occurred before the security checkpoints were reached)?

I’ve often wondered about that, whether it be a mall, a subway, a bridge, an airport, a theater—even with a warning, how would you protect against such an attack? What should you, the government, actually do about it if you don’t know where or in particular when, or who? In the case of Brussels, do we really know that, after Abdeslam’s capture there wasn’t a “heightened search for the cell”? It’s not as though “heightened searches” necessarily lead to success, either, and it’s not as though there wasn’t probably a “heightened search” already going on, in order to effect Abdeslam’s capture in the first place.

I can’t find the information at the moment, but I remember reading long ago that in Israel airport security begins when a person is approaching the airport in a car. In other words, it doesn’t just begin at the security counter when people put their carry-ons on the machines, it starts long before. But just a moment’s reflection should make it clear that the Israeli approach can only work in a country so small with so few airports and flights. To do something similar here would nearly paralyze our air travel system, not to mention the traffic coming into airports.

The Haaretz article calls for “more stringent security preparedness in crowded public places.” Again, what would that entail in a city the size of Brussels? I would imagine it would mean more police presence looking for suspicious people, “suspicious” meaning those with backpacks or bulky clothing, which probably covers half the people on the subway. If you add “those who look Middle Eastern” into the prescription, you’ve still got a lot of people (for example, I and my entire family would most definitely be among them). This would require an extraordinary outlay of police, money, and public education, and I don’t think it necessarily would have prevented a thing. We also don’t know it wasn’t already in place in Brussels, at least to a certain extent.

The bottom line is that such attacks are extraordinarily difficult to defend against, even with advance (general) warnings.

There are other things I think should have been done. I agree that neighborhoods known to harbor Muslim immigrants who are radicals need greatly stepped-up surveillance and if necessary much more deportation (and greater border security and immigration limits, including from other EU countries, to avoid their coming back in). Same for radical mosques. Whatever the current level is, it does not seem to be nearly enough.

But there’s also the source— Raqqa, Syria. Why is that place still standing? Why has it been allowed to function for so long?

Another thing that troubles me is how much information—unnecessary and dangerous information, in my opinion—the MSM routinely gives out. The terrorists might have been concerned anyway that Abdeslam would squeal, but why oh why did we also have to be given “reports that he was cooperating with his captors”? It is not unusual for the MSM to reveal information that has harmed security and intelligence, all for the sake of a story.

[NOTE: I have little doubt that some people will say that the way to protect against such attacks is to deport all Muslims. I’ve already discussed that in several previous threads (including comments sections), such as this and this, among others. I also plan another post at some point soon that will discuss it.]